Search Results: bates (47)

Graphic: Jodie Emery

​It’s Reefer Madness all over again as David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush who now has his own conservative political website, claims that last weekend’s tragic events in Tucson, Arizona are a good reason to continue America’s war on marijuana users.

“After horrific shootings, we hear calls for stricter regulation of guns,” he wrote on FrumForum in an idiotic little piece entitled “Did Pot Trigger Giffords Shooting?
“The Tucson shooting should remind us why we regulate marijuana,” Frum wrote. “Jared Lee Loughner, the man held as the Tucson shooter, has been described by those who know as a ‘pot smoking loner.’ He had two encounters with the law, one for possession of drug paraphernalia.”
But, as pointed out by Stephen C. Webster at The Raw Story, Frum has a tenuous grasp of the facts.

Photo: Fox 2
Never mind that medical marijuana isn’t against the law for authorized patients in Michigan. MSU’s gonna bust legal patients if they bring pot on campus.

​A policy prohibiting legal medical marijuana patients from using or possessing cannabis on the campus of Michigan State University is coming under increasing fire.

In “Frequently Asked Questions” page on MSU’s website, the policy is outlined, reports Todd A. Heywood of The Michigan Messenger:
3. Does the Act change University policy regarding drug use or possession on campus?
No, University policies have not changed. Students and employees may not use or possess marihuana on campus. This is true whether the marihuana is smoked or ingested through other means. Michigan State University is subject to the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 and the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act Amendment of 1989. Consistent with those laws, the MSU Drug and Alcohol Policy prohibits the unlawful manufacture, distribution, dispensation, possession, or use of controlled substances, illicit drugs, and alcohol on any property governed by the Board of Trustees and at any site where work is performed by individuals on behalf of the University. The Alcohol and Controlled Substances Policy also applies to employees performing safety-sensitive functions and whose position responsibilities require they obtain a commercial driver’s license.
Employees and students who violate University policy prohibiting the use or possession of illegal drugs on campus are subject to disciplinary action through the appropriate disciplinary process.
The problem with MSU’s policy, according to activists, is that it violates Michigan’s medical marijuana law, passed overwhelmingly by 63 percent of the voters in 2008. That law specifically prohibits anyone from denying rights and privileges based on the fact that a person is a legal medical marijuana patient.

Photo: Zazzle

​On July 13, the city council of Berkeley, California asked voters to approve a 2.5 percent tax on the city’s medical marijuana dispensaries, three of which grossed a total of $19 million last year.

“This is huge,” said Mayor Tom Bates. According to the mayor, the tax will help close a $16.2 million budget gap, but it’ll do more than that, report Christopher Palmeri and Michael Marois at Business Week.
It also makes sure that as marijuana sales go mainstream, the local community — not outside business interests — benefits. “We don’t want to have Philip Morris coming in here, sucking up all the money,” Bates said.

Photo: Larry Mayer/Billings Gazette
Billings Police and Fire Departments investigate the scene of a firebomb thrown through the front door of Montana Therapeutics, a medical marijuana store, May 10, 2010.

​Hateful rhetoric leads to hateful actions. This should-be self-evident axiom was once again demonstrated when two medical marijuana businesses were firebombed in the last two days in Billings, Montana.

“It was ugly, and it was a hate crime,” said David Couch, owner of Big Sky Patient Care, one of the two medical marijuana provides vandalized in the last two days, reports Kahrin Deines of the Billings Gazette.

The firebombs thrown through the front door of two medical marijuana businesses in Billings were accompanied with a hateful message. “NOT IN OUR TOWN” was spray painted on the fronts of both buildings, according to the owners.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Gone to Pot
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Photo: The Daily Show
Now that’s a real reporter — getting the story.

The Daily Show‘s Jason Jones takes an up-close but light-hearted look at the increasingly tough competition going on in Denver’s medical marijuana dispensary scene.

Interviews with two dispensary owners — from a “mom and pop” type store and a bigger, glitzier shop — serve to highlight, in a humorous way, some of the differences and debates now shaping the future of medical marijuana.

By the way, I know The Daily Show played it for laughs… But I have to agree with the dispensary operator who has an issue with the strain name “Green Crack.”

Graphic: Cannabis Defense Coalition

​There’s a disquieting trend lately in the medical marijuana arena. To this close observer of the rhetoric and results surrounding state (and District of Columbia) restrictions on medicinal use of cannabis, every law seems a little tighter than the one before.

It seems it’s become de rigueur for politicians to announce “this would be the strictest medical marijuana law in the nation” every time legislation is introduced, as if the states are in some sort of twisted competition to see who can be the meanest to sick people.
Since when is making safe access to marijuana difficult or impossible for patients something to brag about?
For instance, the new medical marijuana law in New Jersey, and, apparently the one to be voted on this week in D.C., prohibit cannabis cultivation by qualified patients. For many low income patients, this represents the only realistic chance of obtaining quality medicine.

loopylettuce.wordpress.com
Here’s what pot does to you. Just ask Jill Wellock!

​Freelance writer Jill Wellock has a problem.

She really, really dislikes marijuana and, apparently, those who use it.
Wellock generously shares this extreme distaste with us in a guest op-ed piece in today’s edition of The Olympian, the newspaper of Olympia, Washington, the state’s capitol.
Jill gets right down to business with a real winner of a headline:
‘Marijuana saps initiative, ambition and responsibility’
Headline aside, we know right off the bat we’re in for a bumpy ride when Jill starts off by confiding in us that she attended a “rough junior high.” Apparently not really one for nostalgia, Wellock recalls “the stoner girls” carving “Joe Elliot” [sic]“into their forearms with wood screws to prove Def Leppard allegiance.”
Oh, Jill. First of all, if they carved “Joe Elliot,” they aren’t done carving, because the rock star’s name is spelled “Elliott.” Maybe you should give those “stoner girls” a call and tell them they need to get back out the wood screws.
Secondly, if these had been real “stoner girls” during the time period mentioned, they wouldn’t have been carving freakin’ Def Leppard tributes on their arms; it would have been Marilyn Manson. Or maybe Jerry Garcia.
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